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MUSIC
Nancy Sinatra

Song premiere: Typefighter's 'Nancy Sinatra'

Patrick Ryan
USA TODAY
Washington, D.C.-based rock band Typefighter.

Juggling a rock band and a food truck might be difficult for some, but for Ryan McLaughlin, it's easy as pie.

By day, he runs the Washington, D.C.-based Dangerously Delicious Pies; by night, he leads four-piece garage-pop outfit Typefighter, premiering new single Nancy Sinatra on usatoday.com.

"It was one of those 'recorded just for the hell of it'-type things," he says of the high-adrenaline track. Initially recorded as a rough demo a couple years ago, Nancy Sinatra resurfaced as the band started gathering material for debut album The End of Everything, out Tuesday. "First it was a little acoustic demo, just me and a guitar, but we started playing it and it turned into a really noisy ruckus. It was almost like, 'Just what the hell? We'll throw it on the record.' "

After rushing out 2011 EP fall winter fall, Typefighter decided to take its time making an LP that not only satisfied creatively, but also emphasized the "pop" aspect of the group's grunge-pop sound. Drawing inspiration from Weezer and Jimmy Eats World, the band chose to record The End of Everything in Vermont, "really removing ourselves from everything familiar and just focusing on the record," he says. "It was a really powerful motivator. We had a lot of time just to figure it out and had a lot of fun doing it."

It's been a long road to where they are now, McLaughlin says of Typefighter, which has opened shows for alt-rock bands such as We Were Promised Jetpacks and The So So Glos. What began as his solo project with an autoharp eventually became a folk band, before transitioning to its current rock incarnation. Although it seems like an unusual path, McLaughlin says "it's been a really natural evolution for us. We've just gradually been getting louder and louder and more electric and more rock, and it just ended up being what it is now."

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